Land owners have many options when it comes to landscaping their property. Land owners may add grasses, plants, flowers, bushes, trees, rocks, yard gnomes, mulch, and/or the like to their land to enhance the look of their land and add value to their property. Furthermore, many land owners add hardscapes, such as pools, decks, furniture, or the like for outdoor entertainment purposes. Selecting and positioning these landscape elements is a difficult task for most land owners. In fact, many land owners turn to professional landscapers to determine recommended landscape elements to add and the location to add them.
Many factors may play a role in landscape design. For example, plants, grasses, flowers, bushes, trees, and other living landscape elements require proper water, sunlight, and soil conditions to grow. And, these criteria vary widely by plant species. Even with advances in technology, knowing the best landscape elements for a specific piece of property may be a challenging task.
Today, modern handheld mobile devices, such as smart phones or the like, have the capability to facilitate payment for a cup of coffee or provide a boarding pass for a flight. These advances combine multiple technologies through a handheld mobile device to provide a user with an array of capabilities. For example, many smart phones are equipped with significant processing power, sophisticated multi-tasking operating systems, and high-bandwidth Internet connection capabilities. Moreover, such mobile devices often have additional features that are becoming increasingly more common and standardized features. Such features include, but are not limited to, location-determining devices, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) devices; sensor devices, such as accelerometers; and high-resolution video cameras.
As the capabilities of such mobile devices have increased, so too have the applications (i.e., software) that can be used with the mobile devices. One such example of innovative software is a category known as augmented reality (“AR”), or more generally referred to as mediated reality. One such example of an AR presentment application platform is Layar, available from Layar, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Layar platform technology analyzes location data, compass direction data, and the like in combination with information related to the objects, locations or the like in a captured video stream to create browse-able “hot-spots” or “tags” that are superimposed on the mobile device display, resulting in an experience described as “reality browsing.”